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Volume 65: Issue 4
Brevard College
For hearts and minds as large as the mountains
Friday, February 28,1997
Construction on new arts center has begun
Press Release
BC News Bureau
The Paul B. Porter Center for the
Performing Arts will become the
flagship facility for the College’s long
respected programs in the performing
arts, just as the college emerges as a
senior college. Brevard College has one
of the largest full time faculties in music
of any private college or university in
the South. For the past 30 years, the
A.F.A. degree program has been fully
accredited by the National Association
of Schools of Music, making Brevard
College one of only a handful of jimior
college programs so accredited in the
nation. Plans for the new baccalaureate
programs in music have been approved
by N.A.S.M., and the 4 year programs
in music and art, as well as
environmental studies, have received
full accreditation by the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools.
The new center embodies Brevard
College’s strong tradition and its
commitment to excellence in education
and performance.
The concert hall in the Center,
designed in consultation with an
internationally known acoustician, is
intended to be a superlative acoustical
performance space for music, as fine as
any in the nation. Other performance
venues m the Center will include a
performance and teaching playhouse for
the College’s theater studies program,
an entrance pavilion suitable for small
chamber performances, and a large
outdoor amphitheater.
All in all, the Center will extend
dramatically Brevard College’s already
extensive range of performance and
teaching opportunities for the faculty,
students, and the community of Brevard
and Transylvania County.
Construction costs for the Center
were included in the College’s Building
for the Future Campaign that was
conducted between 1990 and 1994. With
a goal of $16,000,000.00 and
commitments of $20,000,000.00, the
campaign successfully ended 6 months
ahead of schedule. Pledges and
donations restricted for the Center did
not meet projected costs. A total of
$4,000,000.00 was pledged and
represented more than half of the funds
needed to cover construction costs.
This artist’s rendition depicts how
(Special to the Clarion)
Currently, $5,652,100.00 in gifts and
pledges for the initial phase has been
received from numerous individuals,
foundations, banks, and corporations. In
addition, a gift of $2,000,000.00 to
endow operational expenses has been
pledged.
As the building rises from the
ground, the College will continue its
campaign to raise the additional
$4,600,000.00 needed to comp ete
Phase II of the construction, as well as
substantial endowments to underwrite
programming once the Center is
completed. A separate effort to fund a
large pipe organ is also underway.
® for the Brevard college
project, first announced six years ago,
L Middleton McMillan Architects of
Charlotte, with John Tabor and RusseU
Nicholson as principal architecte.^g
recent designs by Middleton McMdto
include the BlumenthalPerforimg^
Center and Spirit Square
the new Law Enforcement Center m
the Downtown Library Bra^
Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, th
Squarrer. building for DuPon. “
Uie Isotermal Connmuiuty College
the new Performing Arts Center will look upon completion.
Performing Arts and Continuing
Education Center.
The contractor for the Porter Center
is the J.A. Jones Construction Company
of Charlotte, with Mr. William J. Klein
as senior project manager. The J.A.
Jones Construction Company has been
associated with Brevard College for over
50 years; two of the construction
company’s past CEO’s have chaired the
College’s Board of Trustees. One of the
nation’s largest construction companies,
Jones has built major projects around the
world, as well as several of the
buildings on the Brevard College
campus. .
In order to perfect the musical
properties of the Center’s concert h^l,
the College has involved the world-
renowned acoustical consultants,
Kirkegaard & Associates of Downer s
Grove IL. Kirkegaard’s list of recent
credits include: The San Francisco
Symphony’s Davies Hall; the Chicago
Symphony’s Orchestra Hall; the Grosser
Musikvereinssaal in Vienna; the
Schnitzer Concert Hall in ?««« the
Ordway Music Theater in St. Paul, MN,
and the Duncan Recital Hall at Rice
University in Houston.
The design of the Porter Center for
the Performing Arts will be a
distinguished addition to the prevailing
colonial revival architecmre of the
College campus. The exterior, and much
of the Ulterior will be rendered in brick
with traditional colonial white details,
including a distinctive classical entrance
pavilion adjacent to the College s
beloved King Creek.
The Center will rise above the 100-
year flood plain on the banks of the
creek at the northwestern comer of the
campus. It eventually will be shielded
from North Broad Street by plantings
designed to recreate a Southern
Appalachian forest. Another landscaping
feature on the southeast comer of the
site will be a naturalized wetland area
that will serve as a filtering pond for
water draining from the Center and its
parking areas. Parking for the facility
will be shielded fi-om sight by
landscaped earthen berms and plantings.
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